1) Zookoda is shutting down Dec. 2009. Makes everything else kind of irrelevant. See email below from support.

2)Zookoda can no longer import email lists. It’s one at a time.

3)The length of a Zookoda post is limited to 1400 characters.

I’ve invested 3 hours in learning their system (not intuitively obvious) – I had everything figured out and a beautiful template – now I have to start over. I use Feedburner for new subscribers and PHPList for old ones (or subscribers that I add manually). I just cut-and-paste the html into PHPlist, its not a big deal.
_____
Hello!

First and foremost, we want to thank you for being a loyal part of the Zookoda family!

Unfortunately, we have some sad news to share with you. Zookoda will be closing its doors officially on December 1, 2009. Until that time you may continue to schedule and send broadcasts as normal. Be that as it may, only a very limited customer support team will be available to service your needs from this point forward until the close date.

Again, we value you as a customer and we do wish that we could keep our service open to be of help to you. Sadly, in these trying times it is not something that is economically feasible for our organization. We have hopes to be able to bring back this service at some point, yet we have no estimated timeframe for execution.

Until then our Zookoda friends, we wish you the best of luck and hope that the future brings you great times!

Thank you,
Zookoda Support

Any suggestions??

-Justin

Support Response
Hi John, Thanks for reaching out to us. Our team has determined that the issue is with the page timing out very quickly, we are researching a resolution and are looking to implement a fix as soon as possible, though I have no ETA. We greatly appreciate your patience in this matter, thank you! Zookoda Support

Comment
I came back today to try and read my list and I still receive this error The request has exceeded the allowable time limit Tag: cfmail The error occurred in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\zookoda\zoo\application.cfc: line 128 126 : 127 : 128 : 129 : Error: #arguments.exception.rootCause.Message#

130 : Detail: #arguments.exception.rootCause.Detail#

——————————————————————————– Resources: Check the ColdFusion documentation to verify that you are using the correct syntax. Search the Knowledge Base to find a solution to your problem. Browser Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; Alexa Toolbar; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30) Remote Address 76.183.181.128 Referrer Date/Time 18-Oct-07 08:03 PM Stack Trace (click to expand)

Kind Regards Zookoda Support Team

All in all, it is not looking to good as I see other posts here mentioning cold fusion errors. I told you, I broke the website.

I have sent several support tickets have not received a reply. Either they are overworked in that area or they just don’t give a crap.

Needless to say, I have taken them off my blog and will find another way to send newsletters.

Zookoda was an excellent program but is is now nothing more than a P.O.S. Would not recommend them to my worst enemy.

After about 3 minutes, progress stopped, and about ten minutes after that, the browser informed me that an internal error had occurred on the remote server, listed some critical error messages and told me to read my Cold Fusion manual to determine the problem.

I closed the browser, re-opened and returned to the login screen, logged out, logged in again, could find no limits as to list size, so I reduced the list by 20k, crashed, 10k, crashed, reduced to 2500, crashed, 1 address, OK, 5 addresses OK, 500 address, crashed and I am unable to bring the site up at all. I sent numerous e-mails to support and even to PayPerPost support. no replies. I have now returned to the site, very slow and cannot submit a trouble ticket.

I think I have crashed the site, and on my way to being immortalized as the supreme newbie hacker of all time, or a buffoon! With the Internet, it could go either way.

Yes. I got every email answered. Thanks Veronique. I will continue with screen cast of Zookoda.

Thanks Veronique.

By the way: She even gave me her personal email address.

Regards

Johan

I just wanted to reiterate that Zookoda Support is quite active and I just verified that your emails have been addressed an answered. I, of course, apologize for the delay, but as you can read on the blog, there have been server issues and the holiday weekend set us back a bit. However, we’re movin’ on up and making sure to lend attention to every issue reported. If you have not received a response to a particular issues, please let me know immediately.

Thank you!
Veronique
Zookoda Support

For various reason I believe that Zookoda has the best features from all the RSS-to-email services.

I wanted to teach people how to use zookoda using screencast.

But the support issues you mentioned above is still a problem.

I mailed them twice through their contact page and once through payperpost’s contact page and I am not getting any response.

Johan

It took me some time but the more I used Zookoda the more I like what they do and the options they give you.

As I said above I use aweber. I also use feedburner and tried to use FeedBlitz but they classified my as a spammer. I spoke to Phil and he said that I need to change my provider as they will not unlock/unblock my IP. If I had 1000′s of people on my list I understand why they classified me as a spammer but all the email I have total less than 200. His solution is very technical and I decided to use feedburner but they do not allow scheduling etc.

So I tried Zookoda again and was surprised by what they offer for free.

Time will tell on the issues you mentioned above but they have supported me fine.

Johan

After many hours I could not figure out how to setup a recurring broadcast for blog posts.

I know Zoodoka said they support the product but their blog is non existent at the moment and there’s no support forum.

This is what I will do until Feedburner created flexible scheduling.

I will create my blog posts and save them as drafts and then publish them all when I want to – one big bang every time I feel like it. Then feedburner can come along and grab the posts burn them and email them according to my manual publishing schedule.

Here I am going off to the reliable but inflexible feedburner. See you there for the free option.

BTW: I use aweber personally but I teach newbies how to market using blogs and lists by introducing them to the free options; wordpress.com and feedburner.

Hope you have a great day.

Johan Horak

More updates to Zookoda users would be most welcome.

I’ve been using Aweber for 3 years and am very happy with it. I recommend it to all my small business clients.

My only comments on this post were ‘A note from Darren’ where I talked about the deliverability issues that I have with yahoo email addresses.

Thanks for stopping by – if you’d like me to put you in touch with Brian please let me know.

Thanks for the detailed feedback on Zookoda! We certainly want to make sure that all issues are addressed as effectively as possible and I do recall answering quite a few of your tickets. We did have an issue earlier this week and our technical staff has worked diligently on resolution. I apologize if you have experienced any difficulty or delay due to this. As for your issues specifically, we’ve provided information regarding the Yahoo concerns, and your broadcasts are up to date! Please contact me directly if you still have questions regarding either issue.

As the lead support for Zookoda at this time, I want to assure you that support has not dropped off at all. In fact, Zookoda tickets and communications are addressed throughout the day. I am concerned that this post indicates you have not heard from us. In looking through our history, both our customer support and tech teams have had several communications with you over the last week via email and ticketing. Please let me know if you have not been receiving our communications, as that is a great concern and we’d like to address it asap.

And you are right, the blog should have more updates- and I’ll certainly get on that!

Additionally, Riscario Insider, have you submitted a ticket? Any issues should definitely be reported, as every piece of information is as important as the last! Anyone else with questions as well- please send a ticket through the ‘Contact Us’ link at the top of the Zookoda homepage. We’re here for you!

Veronique
Zookoda Support

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop, AWeber is great value for the money.